Talent changes are easier to identify with pitchers earlier in the season, as changes in velocity, pitch shape, and pitch mix are more readily apparent. Change isn’t always good and turning one bad pitch into a good one isn’t a guarantee of success but it’s a pretty good start.

When a pitch has seen dramatically different results against it, chances are something changed, whether solely involving the aforementioned qualities above, or how the pitches fit together as part of a player’s pitch mix whole. Change is everywhere and ongoing, we just have to find the where and (hopefully) why.

Using Run Value (RV/100 pitches) as our barometer, we’ll see what we can see about which pitchers have seen the most dramatic turnaround with one (or more) of their offerings. Remember that RV is the total run impact, according to the base-count state when the pitch was thrown. The more negative, the better. Read the rest of this entry »

It seems we spend most Aprils ballyhooing about what should and shouldn’t be believed, what can and cannot be discussed. Some valid, some not. What I believe can sometimes get lost in early season analysis – or missed completely – is what the data (whether in April or September) can tell us beyond the numbers and beyond the sample.

Intent.

Good or bad, change or no change, we can find intent within data, regardless of sample size. Because, simply speaking, professional baseball is played by humans who are trying to be good at baseball. And like most humans, they will attempt to do more of what gets them a reward (being good at baseball) and less of what gets them a punishment (being bad at baseball).

If you start from there and work backward, intent can help you with analysis when the sample size is lacking. This can be more telling in regards to pitchers, at least early in the season, as they are the first-mover in baseball’s 1-on-1 battles, chooser of their path on every pitch.

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With Statcast replacing their radar-based tracking systems with the new Hawkeye (optical-based) system in 2020, what we’re now able to see on the field has taken another giant leap forward. What was once inferred is now being observed and those observations have led to ground-breaking work by Barton Smith, Driveline Baseball, and others in fully parsing the forces in play when it comes to pitch movement.

I highly recommend the above readings (and a host of others) for a more in-depth explanation but here are some cliff notes for those new to the concept of seam-shifted wakes:

Every baseball spins in a certain direction, spinning around a certain axis, resulting in a certain movement. The old method of determining spin direction was to use the movement measured by Pitchf/x and work backward to infer what the spin axis should have been. Or, “the baseball moved this way, it must have spun in this direction”.

Hawkeye’s cameras, however, are able to observe what the spin axis actually is after leaving the pitcher’s hand. When comparing the two measurements (inferred and observed) the deviation between the two can tell whether more forces than the downward one of Magnus are at play.

The work of Smith and at Driveline has centered around how the seam orientation of the pitched baseball in flight is informing those “side forces” and how best pitchers can attempt to keep their seams in the place most conducive for their desired movement. Sounds difficult but it’s certainly possible and pitchers have been doing it unknowingly as long as baseball has been played, playing with and cycling through grips in search of the elusive nirvana that is “I just found one that works”.

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We can be dumb about pitching. Rather, we tend to be not as smart in April as we are later in the season. As the year goes on and we get more information about the skills that pitchers (and their opponents) have, we naturally get more choosy with who we’re willing to start.

In April, however, we’re still all high off of draft prep and are more willing to believe whatever narrative sold us on them in the first place. We put aside obvious questions like, “What if Chris Paddack still has a terrible fastball?” and  “But isn’t he still Andrew Heaney?”, instead going full bore with, “Good enough to draft, good enough to start!”. At least until the wheels come off.

The simple reason to raise your bar for starting early in the season is that this is when we know the least about the pitchers themselves, as well as their opponents’ general offensive prowess, strikeout rate, win likelihood, etc. Compared to what we’ll know later in the year, we’re often flying blind in April, at least in terms of the pitchers outside of the top tiers. And yet at the time when we’re the least informed, our bar for starting is often the lowest.

Obviously, you want to avoid bad starts all the time but I aim to be even more risk-averse early in the season because I want maximum flexibility later in the year. Acquiring good ratios (whether via FAAB, the wire, or trade) is expensive (or impossible) later in the season while scrounging for wins and strikeouts can be cheap. That is, at least they are if you don’t need to stress about ratios when doing said scrounging.

August and September may seem far away but focus on keeping your ratios shiny early and you’ll give yourself more avenues for doing business later.

Let’s go deeper on a few of the shakier options you may be tempted to roll with early, but just remember to choose wisely.

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